| Soundwave said: Actually the funny thing is the best selling game systems for 3 of the 4 major platform providers (Sega, Nintendo, and Microsoft) came 4 years or less after their predacessor. |
It is all about competition though at this point.
The Genesis launched at time when the NES/Famicom was undisputed king, with its superior power and growing fanbase in the West it arrived just in time.
The DS was initially pitched as a concurrent system but thanks to its unique game play it became true successor and whipped Sony's handheld entry world wide, although it should be stated that in certain territories the PSP toward the end of that generation came back to make it more of a fight thanks to Monster Hunter plus various PS2 and PC ports that the DS couldn't handle. A similar story happened with the Wii except with a more dramatic decline.
The 360 is actually a bit of analomy, it launched early didn't do much but steadily grew thanks to it online abilities and games. Western 3rd parties were a big factor in that, especially those that brough over PC ports which would later help popularize those sort of games on all consoles more then in previous generations.
All that being said, the NX if it tried to emulate any of those is likely to fail. They don't have the third party support of the 360, nor are they likely to build it like the PSP (in Japan at least) and the Genesis did by being the alternative console due to there already being one in the form of Xbox One. And Nintendo tried the alternate input method route with the Wii U and failed, with stuff like Oculus Rift and Hololens on the horizon, not much Nintendo probably has the ability to do to match those if they do indeed take off as the future of non standard controls. Jumping out early with the NX also won't win them over all the Wii U adopters they have picked up within the last couple of years.
2017 allows them enough time to hopefully build up a decent schedule of future releases from themselves and maybe other third parties so they don't run into the same problems they had with the Wii U and 3DS, droughts, a lack of a true AAA big game and launches filled with late ports of games that were on other platforms already.
